Social, economic and political comment by Alan Charman

21 May 2013

Question for the anonymous detractors - I received yet another nice anonymous hate email yesterday:

What purpose do you think you serve? Other than proving to me that you have no balls, that is.

The email in question is a typically illiterate response from some clown who thinks threats of violence will encourage me to believe that "only 1 or 2 percent" of people in poverty smoke, drink, play pokies, waste money on fast food, gamble or do drugs.

Given that irrefutable proof exists that 35% of unemployed adults smoke, and that bars, liquor outlets, fast food shops and pokies (and tinny/P houses) proliferate in the same areas of poverty, I am amazed that there are people stupid enough to take that tack. Do you think the queues outside KFC every dole and benefit day are people driving through from Remuera to eat their Big Macs and Double Downs in a carpark in Clendon?

Apparently this bloke [?] is "whatching" me. Pity is, he'd be much better watching out his window.

18 May 2013

A piece of good news, the world's best comedian, and some truly amazingly good news.

First off, I am extremely heartened by the groundswell of support for legalised euthanasia, here and throughout the western world. We already have Holland and Switzerland where euthanasia is allowed, and it looks very much like UK is set to join them.

It isn't an ideal, but it's a huge improvement on the current situation, and given Key's low-grade support of the option, there is a chance that the next election will see a similar proposal reach Parliament here. (The retirement and death of the hugely anti-euthanasia Pater Foley, chair of the NZMA won't hurt the chances.) Hopefully, the election will weed out some of the more fairytale loving MPs - people like English (Roman Catholic), Maggie Barry (self-centred maggot), Peter Dunne (evangelical christian) and the rest of them who have a 4000 year-old fictional book as a spiritual adviser.

Mind you, Dunne changed his tune fast enough on the Sky City pokies for event centre deal, so maybe if we institute a tax on euthanasia he will change his mind!

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That segues beautifully into the best comedian on the planet - Pope Francis: the new pope.

This man heads one of - if not the - richest organisations that have ever existed. The Vatican alone is worth many billions, and if all Roman Catholic property is added together, the end result must show assets of almost a trillion dollars - enough to feed all the world's poor for many years.

Despite that, old Pope Franky can stand up and say this without bursting into laughter:

"Money has to serve, not to rule,"

I've left a message for Franky to call when he puts the "For Sale" sign on church buildings, tells parishioners to stop giving 10% of their pay to the church, swaps all of the gold the church owns for stainless steel and generally follows the teaching of their own god that "A rich man going to heaven is equally likely as a camel passing through the eye of a needle."

Muddying the holy water is the fact that, in the western world, Roman Catholic church congregants are almost entirely of above-average wealth and income, awash in the evil that the pope sees. Confessions up?

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While this story makes even the most-hardened old cynic (me) realise that there are still some genuinely decent, caring and generous people left on the planet.

You need to factor in that US workers are not protected by minimum pay rates and some waitresses earn as little as $2/hour, and they make their income through earning tips.

(Some good comments on that page, too.)

17 May 2013 - The 2013 Budget

I have to hand comedic points to John Key's description of Bill English as "the envy of the western world". Tui, I'm calling you on this one. Yep, I bet every other finance minister wishes they could boost their economies by having an enormous natural disaster.

The budget itself is the worst Clayton's budget I've seen in nearly 40 years of looking at them.

Insulation for low-income homes: $100,000,000! Down from the prior $300,000,000.

WOF for low-income houses! As a trial on a few state houses.

$19M for charter schools! Instead of putting it into the bottom tier.

Land being freed up in Auckland! Which will not put downward pressure on prices, and will not even keep up with growth.

Outside organisations to be given HCNZ role! Limited to $30,000,000 or all of 100 homes.

Power to prevent housing bubble give to RBNZ! A few years too late.

It's a budget which reinforces Keyglish's position as the party of nothing. They have admitted that things are a problem, then thrown a wet dish-rag at them.

You admit low-income housing is a problem, so why the hell not just fix it? The smart chaps in National know for a fact that housing standards create net economic benefits for the government. They also know that this way ensures a lead-in time for legislation of at least ten years. I wonder whose voters that will most advantage?

You admit that the property market is a bubble (of 25% right now, according to IMF) so pass legislation which would have been useful a decade ago, but right now is far less than the one which would count - a capital gains tax.

A piss-weak effort. I always knew Key & English had no balls, and the budget proves they're a pair of self-serving eunuchs. Key has said that he became PM to make a difference, when the reality - as expected - id that he wanted to be PM so he could say he'd been PM, and the most important thing about the job is holding on to it.

The budget may well be enough to keep Key in power next year - it tips its hat in several directions, while never exposing National voters to reality.

Clever enough, to be sure, but an appalling piece of treachery from a pair of hypocrites.

16 May 2013

Well, that was the budget for this year.

I'm going to take some time to completely digest what it means, so I won't go David Shearer on it, but I am wondering which of the provisions were aimed at poverty, because I couldn't see any and I've been too busy to read much.

I did see $19,000,000 for charter schools? Aren't they supposed to save money?

More tomorrow.

15 May 2013

Isn't it strange how a major disaster - the Christchurch earthquakes - can turn out to be the financial saviour of the entire country?

First off, let me admit to being completely wrong about the economy - it isn't contracting at all, and is in fact expanding at an amazing rate. Even in worldwide recessionary times, the economy is growing at 2.5% and unemployment is down plenty.

Even manufacturing is making a comeback!

I'm not going to congratulate Key & his cronies for much of the improvement, as it really is down to just two factors, neither of which has involved the government - the earthquakes and the unquenchable Chinese thirst for NZ baby formula.

Whatever is causing the current growth, we'll take it, and I have noticed a more optimistic mood among small businesses recently as the trickle-down effect starts to come into play. Money is now being spent on maintenance and machinery and new jobs are opening daily, and this is as we come up to the slack time of year, when the cows are dry and the roads are wet.

Spring 2013 is looking like being a very good time to be in business!

14 May 2013

One death is tragedy, one million deaths is statistic. Stalin

Illustrated beautifully by the sheer panic around synthetic cannabis. Urgent legislation in Parliament, police raids on dairies, possibly one death attributed to synthetic cannabis. One death in the entire world. Ever.

Yet cigarettes cause 13,000 deaths every day.

13 May 2013

So, Aaron Gilmore has finally fallen on his sword, and not taken the easy way out the other fallen list MP Brendan Horan has, retaining his MP's salary and perks for a year without shame. Key has rightly praised Gilmore for quitting, because it enables him to divorce his party from the fact they picked a candidate whose credentials were as phony as his stated claims.

Key will be very glad not to have to face the figure of Gilmore every day in Parliament. Instead, he gets the almost too good to be true list MP in the guise of a young mum who just happens to be in a civil union with another woman. Fraudster creep or a junior Louisa Wall? It's pretty obvious which one of those looks better as a part of the National Party.

Update on the utu emails. You could not pay for this stuff. Gilmore is Man of the Year already!

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The measure of society's real success has long been known to be most visible in the way it treats its least-able members. In that list, we must include the dependent elderly, people with severe disabilities - both intellectual and physical - and the chronically ill.

In New Zealand, we pride ourselves - quite rightly - on being a leader of social change, but we are not showing leadership in the area of care for those who cannot care for themselves.

People who work in these industries are among the lowest-paid workers, receiving a pittance for doing jobs nobody in their right mind would do. I certainly wouldn't feed and clean another person for $15 an hour, but thousands of men & mostly women do just that. For less pay than a service station worker or checkout operator receives, these people wipe the arses and clean the snot from the noses of adult human beings who are unable to do so themselves. Whether due to birth abnormality, accident, disease or age, there are tens of thousands of Kiwis who rely on others to look after them.

The people who work in those situations deserve sainthood, in my eyes, doing the worst job in the world, and for the least money. Most of them that is, because in amongst the huge majority of exceptional people who work in the industry, as with all human endeavours, there are some examples of filth who abuse, vilify, exploit, sexually abuse and commit violence against those in their care.

Cases have littered the media in recent years, and I believe those are just the tip of the iceberg of problems in the industry. Bullying of staff and patients is common, and attempts to change things are stonewalled.

I am presently involved in a major exposé of what is really going on behind closed doors in this country. Watch out for details in the coming weeks, as this will involve some high-profile names and organisations.

11 May 2013

Aren't you glad you don't own newspaper shares? Presuming you don't, of course, because only an idiot would have been holding them for the past decade, as newspapers rightly decline into irrelevancy.

There is a superb example today of how they futilely try to grab readers' attention with bullshit headlines.

Why is the Herald highlighting the police chase? If the cops even gained a mention it should have been in the context of: "Maniacs driving so fast cops gave up the chase."

The way the headline is written, it sounds very much like the police chase caused the crash, when that is entirely false. They were not being chased at all by the time they exited SH20, and were clearly a bunch of losers looking to remove themselves from the gene pool. Fortunately for every other driver, in succeeding, they chose to hit a parked truck, harming only themselves.

Well played!

(Not so well played the blatant copy by Kerre McIvor, nee Woodham - check the dates.)

10 May 2013

An FYI for internet commenters:

I have seen many occasions recently where a person - Aaron Gilmore is favourite at the moment - is referred to as a "douche-bag", no doubt spawned by watching far too much American TV.

Can I suggest that those people using it learn two things:

1 How to spell it - it is douche-bag. I have recently seen all sorts of variations, none of which are correct. It isn't dooshbag, or dushbag, both of which are quite common.

2 What it is. For the edification of people who like the sound of it, a douche is a wash of the vagina. The process has long since fallen out of favour, and its main exponents were prostitutes early in the 20th century. They would pump water and an antiseptic into their vagina and give themselves a good internal clean with it. No doubt some used a bag for the purpose, hence douche-bag.

Now you can use it with knowledge instead of in ignorance.

9 May 2013

A rare win for justice! Willie Manning, only three hours before his execution time, was granted a stay of execution by the Supreme Court. Unbelievably, of the nine judges, one still dissented, voting him to the execution chamber. Read the insane judgement of the dissenting judge here.

Then be glad you don't live in USA.

7 May 2013

As you go about your day, give a moment's thought to Willie Manning, then go and sign up to help Teina Pora.

6 May 2013

A government department getting something right?

Just to prove it really does happen, the Charities Commission is taking away the homophobic hate group Family First's charity status. Given that they are a hate group who speak only for a tiny minority of fundamental christians, this is superb news.

Now, let's get that homophobic, anti-abortion bunch of misogynist freaks in the Roman Catholic church...

4 May 2013

The plot thickens around Aaron Gilmore. I wasn't aware that he'd falsified his CV and been caught out in the past. This bloke is clearly a true-blue National geezer - a cheating, selfish, arrogant jerk.

He is indeed Prime Minister material.

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On the other side of the coin, there are heroes, then there are heroes' heroes, then there's Didar Hossain.

3 May 2013

You know you're a dickhead when your own friend and supporter, who happens to be a lawyer, feels forced to issue a media release describing how much of a dick you've been.

It's a great example of a National Party list MP showing his true colours.

Key, in a complete lack of surprise, wants to put it behind him.

Words that aren't profane fail me.